


After 02x04 (The Fairy Godparents Job)

by PseudoLeigha



Series: (More) 2AM Conversations [17]
Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 14:49:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6524548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot and Sophie discuss Sophie's impending identity crisis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After 02x04 (The Fairy Godparents Job)

It was late when Eliot wandered into the bar, looking to see if there were any likely girls waiting for last call. He wasn’t particularly invested in finding someone to take home for the night, but it would have been a nice ending to the day, if anyone was offering. They weren’t, unless he wanted to take a shot at the bartender, and she was a little young for his tastes. The only other woman in the bar, in fact, was Sophie, drinking alone in a corner and looking more miserable than Eliot had ever seen her.

And possibly more genuine.

Eliot didn’t really _like_ Sophie, even before she had tried to con them into taking the David without telling them all the relevant details – he didn’t care what she said, knowing that she had stolen the second one years before _was_ a relevant detail. They might share a certain camaraderie as teammates, but they weren’t friends, and he didn’t think they ever would be. He trusted her to do her job, but he had a sense of honor that was predicated on straightforward interactions and keeping one’s word, and by that measure, she was a dishonorable woman.

That mattered.

She reminded him, in all the worst ways, of his handlers with the CIA, all lies and facades and manipulation that you knew was there but couldn’t see to stop it. He hated that, and even though he knew that she had learned her lesson about trying to con the team, that didn’t mean that she had stopped trying to nudge them all one way or another. He had come to see that it was second-nature to the woman, telling them all what they wanted to hear and easing their interactions. He could even appreciate that her management was helpful, maybe necessary, for the team to function, but he would never like it.

All of which made it interesting to see the consummate actress, sitting alone in a corner, drinking and looking dejected, even though there was no one there to see it. There was only one explanation: this was not for a con. She was genuinely upset and off guard, for the first time Eliot had ever seen.

He grabbed a beer from Cora and went to see what was wrong.

“Hey, Soph.”

She was slow to look up when he sat in her booth, and the usual spark was missing from her voice as she said, “Oh, hello, Eliot.”

She didn’t even bother trying to pull together a mask for him. He stared, astonished, for nearly half a minute before he just came out and asked: “What’s wrong with you?”

That gained him the quirk of a half-smile, which vanished almost at once. “Johnathan and Catherine broke up on the day we started this last job.” Eliot didn’t know either of those names, but it didn’t sound like Sophie was talking about strangers. He raised an eyebrow. “Apparently there was a mask between us. He didn’t feel he really knew me.” _Ah, that would make Jonathan the art professor._

“Wasn’t there?” he pointed out.

Somewhat to his surprise, the always-collected grifter choked a little on her response. “I – no. There wasn’t. Catherine’s not my real name, of course, and I didn’t tell him about the team, but… all the important things were true.”

“What we do is a pretty important thing, Soph.” Any version of Sophie that left out the fact that she was a grifter was bound to be insubstantial, no matter what other details she offered up.

She just shook her head. “I told him about my real parents. My real university. We talked about art and acting and travelling… all of that was true. I really was trying, Eliot. I could have made up some girl for him, but this… that relationship was supposed to be for me. The real me.” She fell silent for a long moment. “Perhaps… perhaps there’s just not enough of that girl left, anymore,” she said at last, taking a long drink. “Perhaps she really is dead and gone, and there’s nothing left but masks.”

“Sophie…” Eliot trailed off, not certain what to say to that, seeing as it was not an inaccurate assessment of his own view of her.

She sniffed. “And then Nate had to go and say that maybe it would be a good thing if I stopped being Sophie Devereaux, the cad.”

“When did he say that?”

“Oh, hours ago. It was something about how the whole con depended on my telling the truth, and maybe I should do it more often, and I tried to laugh it off, pointed out that Sophie Devereaux is a lie, and he said maybe it would be a good thing, if I stopped being her.” She stopped, taking a quick breath to compose herself, then tried to change the subject. “He was wrong, anyway. Getting Widmark out there, that, yes… but the con was done, then. We already had Fowler out of the way.”

Eliot wasn’t inclined to let her. He told himself that they didn’t need their grifter falling apart on them, or at odds with their mastermind, but in truth, he didn’t care to watch her suffer, regardless of whether or not he actually liked her (and he couldn’t deny that seeing that she did have some genuine feelings made him like her a bit more). He hid a grimace and bit the bullet. “You know he didn’t mean it like that. I think he wishes you’d tell _him_ about your parents and university and all that, but Nate wouldn’t ever want you to be anything but yourself.”

The silence that greeted his stab at being comforting was terrifying, as were the lost, haunted eyes she turned on him when she said, “That’s just the problem, Eliot. I don’t know who that is, anymore.”

She left before he could come up with an adequate response, and the next time he saw her, the mask of Sophie Devereaux was firmly back in place.


End file.
